Tonight, I went to my third in-person mentoring session at my program’s high school in the west 50s. When I arrived, my mentee was sitting and eating pizza with her friend, who is part of the program, but her mentor was absent. I decided to include her in our discussions so that she’d feel like she had a reason to be there that night.

The more I interacted with her, the more I realized that her English was even poorer than my own mentee’s. She could barely understand me when I asked her what grade she was in, so in the end, my mentee ended up being our translator, even though my mentee’s English isn’t so good. I found out that this mentee has only met her mentor once, and that every other mentoring session that has happened, the mentor has never RSVPed or showed up. She’s never given her any advance notification that she couldn’t make it.

That made me so mad when I heard this. The face I made immediately made both the girls burst into laughter. While they found it comical that I was so annoyed, I just couldn’t believe that someone would sign up for this program and be so flaky. Why even participate in the program if you can’t show up at all, and if you don’t, at least give your mentee some notice? It’s as though this mentee shows up once a month, waiting to be disappointed each and every time, except that one lone time her mentor decided to actually show up. These kids join this program, hoping to have someone to look up to, and instead, this kid gets absolutely nothing and instead just keeps getting let down. She’s already complained and told the program coordinator, but unfortunately, he said that they had no more available mentors left to fill in the spot. She just keeps showing up, waiting to one day not be disappointed.

That almost sounds like me.

When I was my friend’s maid of honor back in 2012, planning her bridal shower and bachelorette weekend in Vegas wasn’t that difficult. In the end, I really just had to rely on myself (and I rarely fail myself when it comes to getting stuff done). I had a co-maid of honor who was just a maid of honor in name because the bride was too scared of hurting anyone’s feelings, and three other bridesmaids that in the end, proved to be pretty useless with offering any help. In the end, I made the plan, did all the bookings by myself, and just told each bridesmaid what share she had to cough up for the event. We had little interaction regarding event planning, and maybe in some ways, that was probably the best. I might have liked if someone actually offered to do something tangible, but I guess that’s just wistful thinking now.

I have three bridesmaids now, and there’s clearly some trouble brewing. One is freaking out over little harmless comments I am making about my mom (who has no expectations regarding anything), and another is getting flustered by this bridesmaid and not understanding why she is stressing out so much. And my third bridesmaid is trying to not get involved by not saying or doing anything to help the situation.

Planning events tends to be stressful for those of us who don’t do it on an everyday basis. There’s always going to be stress involved. But what would ultimately make the planning less stressful is if each of us just exercised a bit of level-headedness and tried to work with each other to make the process fun. That doesn’t seem to be happening here.

Chris came back from his latest work trip yesterday, so I thought that maybe the bad dreams would stop since he was back. Well, this ended up not being the case because I had a stressful dream last night again.

In the dream, he and I are arguing over something completely senseless, and then out of nowhere, he starts tearing up all these pieces of paper and envelopes and starts throwing them at me. They don’t really fly the way you think they would, though, and instead, they fly all around us in slow motion, and each piece seems to have a life of its own.

My sleep has been the worst this week. The last time my sleep was this poor was the week that Ed passed away.

I woke up this morning feeling really disturbed. I tried to think back to what I dreamt about before I woke up, and I remembered I was sitting in a public area with my mom that had huge, elegant, almost Victorian looking chairs with big cushions. She’s pacing back and forth, anticipating bad news from an unknown source. In the dream, Ed has been drafted to serve in the Vietnam War (this makes no sense, but what ever seems to make sense in my dreams?), and my mom is worrying every day that something bad has happened. We’ve heard through the grapevine that my brother got shot in combat, but we had no verified news of this happening or of his current condition. Suddenly, a man in miltary dress comes out of nowhere and hands me an official looking envelope.

“Open it,” my mom says. “I think this is it.” She’s implying that this is the news of his death, confirmed in writing.

I open it, and the words just bleed in my vision. The letter notifies us as his family that he has been shot and killed in combat, and that they will be shipping his body back to San Francisco.

I started screaming and sobbing, and my mother is already sobbing. The entire room continues on as though we aren’t there screaming and crying, and we just continue crying and mourning my Ed.

It’s weird to think about Ed dying in other ways. Shortly after he died in 2013, I constantly had dreams of him dying and committing suicide in different ways. Now, it’s like he’s still getting killed, but it’s not by his own means. Other things are out to kill him now.

This week is so dreary. The weather is a mix of cold, rain, and snow. Chris isn’t here. I feel anti-social and don’t really want to talk to anyone. I feel unmotivated to do anything. That’s also probably why I’ve skipped the gym.

The gym doesn’t seem like an exciting place, nor does work. Walking around outside for fresh air doesn’t help since it is cold. Being at home isn’t even that great because it’s just me, and then I have all these things staring at me that need to get done — wedding tasks, scrapbooking, my reading list, career stuff, mentoring… the list seems unending. And today, everything just seems like an obligation rather than a want. It’s one of those type of dreary days.